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ACTIVISTS IN Unison have been shocked by the decision of a disciplinary appeals panel to expel Candy Udwin, London Region deputy convenor and University College London Hospital (UCLH) branch secretary, and Dave Carr, UCLH branch chair, from union membership.

London's congestion charge will do little to solve its transport problems.

ON Monday 17 February London mayor Ken Livingstone's congestion charge comes into force. Between 7am and 6.30pm on weekdays drivers will have to pay £5 a day to drive into central London.

A POWERFUL open letter to Tony Blair recently appeared in two authoritative medical journals-the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Some 500 staff, students and academics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had signed the letter, which urged Blair not to go to war.

POLICE OFFICERS racially abused and violently assaulted a black man in Brixton, south London, a judge ruled last week. Sylbert Farquharson, aged 57, was awarded record damages of nearly £250,000. Judge Dean said Sylbert was "subjected to explicit racist abuse in the street, and a particularly vicious and cowardly form of racist abuse at the police station.

UNIVERSITIES and higher education colleges across London were closed on Tuesday as lecturers and admin and manual workers continued their campaign for a decent London weighting payment. The unions involved-Natfhe, AUT, Amicus and Unison-are claiming a London weighting payment of £4,000.

March in London, 15 February, assemble 12 noon, Embankment and Gower St

NEW LABOUR'S privatisation scheme for London Underground came within a hair's breadth of killing dozens of people last Saturday. A motor fell off a Central Line tube train, knocking it off the rails as it entered Chancery Lane station. The train smashed into the platform, and its doors were ripped off as some carriages slammed into tunnel walls.

AROUND 70 people attended a lively Beating Racism forum in Hackney, east London, last week. The meeting was called by Hackney Trades Council and supported by local union branches.

THE SOCIALIST Alliance received 4.5 percent of the vote in the local council by-election which took place in Tottenham Hale in Haringey, north London, last week.

March to defend education THREE MORE schools in Hackney, east London, have voted in an indicative ballot to take strike action in solidarity with sacked union rep Indro Sen. Teachers at Kingsland School took one day's strike action in support of Sen two weeks ago.

ANYONE WHO listened to Radio 4's Today news programme on Monday morning would have been shocked by the story of a south London family facing eviction. The mother spoke of how one of her children, now eight years old, had repeatedly tried to commit suicide, once tying a flex round his neck, on another occasion throwing himself in front of a car.